Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Women In Uniform

IT WAS interesting to learn via the ABC’s 7.30 that, when talking amongst themselves, some soldiers take a vulgar interest in women, use roughly language, enjoy coarse jokes and make disparaging remarks about your more irritable foreigners, the sort who put a lot of effort into shooting, blowing up or hacking the heads off Australian comrades currently serving somewhere in the Middle Ages.

While those revelations came as a terrible shock, it was nothing to the surprise of seeing the ABC's source of guidance on the need to re-wire the warrior circuitry of Australia’s fighting men. That would be Laurel Papworth, whose expertise was said to have been drawn from “advising defence forces overseas on social media policy.”

25 comments:

In a martial (NB not marital) crisis, Prof, I'd prefer a big ballsy guy with a jump gun ready to protect me, not someone with with PMT or a crippling backache who's dropped her tampons. That's really what the guys were getting at in their comments. Call me old-fashioned but that's just the way things are. Hiring scolding girly media academics to stop men being warriors negates the force of arms we rely on for protection. Civilising the men for desk work is another matter, already dealt with in civvy street.

I'm all for women doing technical and less physical work in the defense forces, but we are not 'fighting men', not warriors who bond for the kill, and we shouldn't be made to pretend we are in order to be promoted to higher ranks. There are other tests of military skill than combat. I've spoken to army men who say, with respect, that the women put up a good show on training exercises, but that ultimately they just don't cut it and it's a disaster when they are taken by such as the Taliban. Living in a woman's body with a woman's brain, I'm bloody sure we're not fundamentally warrior stuff. We fight and bond in other ways and can take our place in defense without combat expectations.

It's beyond me why there isn't more social acceptance of this fundamental difference. There must be some very big ideological forces lined up to promote the opposite view, that our physiology makes no difference to anything.

This current generation of defence leaders are doing what the Boers, Bosche, Japs, Norks, Chicoms, Vietnamese communists and the Taliban couldn't or can't do - destroy the ADF as an effective fighting force.

Absolute crap. One of the few redeeming features of conscription was that it raised the collective IQ of the army by at least 20 points. I guess you're OK with members of a fighting force which it's assumed upholds our democratic value system abusing women and minorities for the hell of it.Pure cowardice.......

"I guess you're OK with members of a fighting force which it's assumed upholds our democratic value system abusing women and minorities for the hell of it."

I have no problems with that at all. Far more important is their ability to win the land battle.

But you were supposedly in the army numbers, you tell me, how did the conversations go with your section buddies? Were you offended at their vulgar talk of women? Did you chip them when they showed a lack of respect for the enemy and called them rude names?

If you did, then no wonder you're such a sook now. I'm guessing you would have copped a flogging or two.

BTW, isn't it a tad hypocritical to whinge about the abuse you copped for being a nasho, then make such an offensive statement about the IQ of the volunteer members of the army?

"Far more important is their ability to win the land battle"Well there you go - who knew - the only qualities you need to be a successful soldier are xenophobia and the capacity for racist and sexist abuse.As for causing offense to volunteers; I'll quote Major General Mike O'Brien CSC (a volunteer) in an essay on training* -"In each case these men (Nashos) made up half the battalion strength. Two comments are worth making. The National Servicemen were indistinguishable from their regular Army counterparts in Vietnam. They changed the Army: being a far more representative slice of the community, they brought skills and intelligence to the Army that had not been present in the junior ranks. There was challenge to the Army way of doing things: they were, in one observer's view, 'a little more inquisitive and less accepting of some more traditional aspects of military life'." "I'm guessing you would have copped a flogging or two."You have a strange imagination. We were generally a much more inclusive bunch than those posting crap on Facebook these days who are a minority and a disgrace to their uniform, but whose cockeyed ignorance you feel bound to defend.*The Australian Army and the Vietnam War 1962-1972 - The Training of Australian Army Units for Service in Vietnam: 7RAR - Michael O'Brien.

"...the only qualities you need to be a successful soldier are xenophobia and the capacity for racist and sexist abuse."

As I pointed out a couple of days ago, comprehension is not your strong point. Either that or you are a lier.

Like yourself, Major General O’Brien is confused. Either:

a. The National Servicemen were indistinguishable from their regular Army counterparts in Vietnam. Or

b. they brought skills and intelligence to the Army that had not been present in the junior ranks.

The myth that soldiers are less intelligent than civilians is a slander. It's also a myth that diversity is, of itself, a good thing.

"We were generally a much more inclusive bunch than those posting crap on Facebook these days..."

Yea sure numbers. Are you seriously telling me that no one in your section made derogatory remarks about the VC? That none ever made lewd comments about women? That you were a member of the most politically correct section in the history of the Australian army before the term was even coined?

I think your brain has become a bit addled in the decades since your glory days.

"either that or you are a lier (sic)"Every time you post you make a fool of yourself."Major General O’Brien is confused"I'd back his credibility over yours any day."no one in your section"You'd know of course. My memory of this is that the few who indulged in what you call "derogatory remarks" were almost always those who went to water when the proverbial hit the fan. They were typically all mouth and trousers and pretty thick to boot. "slander" is precisely what the wankers who post this crap are guilty of - and you feel bound to defend it.

Yes it was a long time ago. The old brain has copped a bit of a pounding since then.

Thus it's no surprise that in your mind those who made rude remarks about women and the enemy were cowards, and those who had nothing but gentlemanly respect for women and the enemy (just you by any chance?) were not only more intelligent but also braver than those other ruffians in your section.

A normal person should feel a sense of shame when continuously attempting to hijack the comments section of someone elses blog.

173599 your lack of success and fulfilment in life does not give you the right to deface another persons success.

By all means find another forum for your wonderful comments (or, as everyone but yourself understands them, "drivel"). Is that possible? Or would it be stating the obvious to say that even you know how tiresome you are. Hence the attempt to piggyback on someone elses success.

Don't play the irritating whelp when leeching the resources of someone you disagree with.

Lizzie, women have a definite place in military affairs. Personal experience says they are merciless interrogators, and it is worth remembering that American Indians believed women best equipped to supervise captives' torture and torment.

If our potential warrior-women can't cope with a bit of crude conversation from our warrior-men how will they get on out there where it's kill-or-be-killed? Will the army have a branch of the Sex Discrimination Board out on the frontline? Who else will lodge a complaint when the enemy, instead of just shooting our warrior-women dead, take them as prisoners to substitute for comfort-women? Damned sexist pigs. The metro-sexuals and femocrats in "their ABC" will be appalled if there is no-one around to protect the human rights of our precious warrior-women.

Even Bob Ellis could see the doublethink required to believe that women who are too precious to handle rough language are somehow tough enough to lead men in combat.

Even more alarming is the doublethink required from the Minister for Defence and the defence hierarchy to believe that the answer to the lack of respect shown to women in numerous defence scandals, is to allow women to join the infantry!

In my work, I have to deal with the PR industry, which is like the parking cop industry, only more manipulative. So far, I'm lucky not to have had to move further down the food chain and deal with poisonout airheads like this one, who make a living out of punching bile, 140 characters at a time, into twitter.com.

The ABC will not rest until we no longer eat meat, do not use coal or oil, have at least 50/50 men and women in every job description, and have policemen and army types all resembling wussy emo cafe crawling lefty arts graduates dancing to the tune of a pc femminazi.

"Laurel consults privately but also teaches Facebook, blogs and Marketing at the University of Sydney (for the last 3 years) and social media courses throughout Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Shanghai."

She in fact flogs courses at the Centre for Continuing Education at the U of S at $ 394.00 a pop (GST exempt) - not bad money at a tick under $ 50.00 an hour per person. A modern day snake oil salesperson.

"Laurel consults privately but also teaches Facebook, blogs and Marketing at the University of Sydney..."So, we've graduated from being "some guy typing in his pyjamas" to Facebook & Blogs being taught at university.

I didn't see the show but have our brutal and licentious soldiery expanded their vocab from serving in the 'Ghan to include foreign terms? Did they for example use such fine Dutch epithets as 'geitenneuquer' and 'peuterneuquer' to describe those decapitating, acid throwing, mutilating bearded beggars? I hope so. JakartaJaap

Thank god 7:30 report has reverted to it's Red kerry ways. I was able to do the dishes without distraction.The ABC back to the usual tripe served up using an extreme view reported out of context to smear the way of life that supports and protects their own weird existence.

Good to see their ABC also inserting Prof Catharine Lumby, who proposes the highly unlikely claim that "The idea that group sex is abhorrent is a very particular view". As only a tax-payer bankrolled specialist academic can.

That video of Laurel Papworth was excruciating.I'd never heard of her, and don't consider myself any better off for having viewed that nonsense.And her website. Good Lord, her website. What a spoilt little prncess she is.How dare anyone disagree with her.